reconditioning joysticks

[neuromancer]

I bought a Ring King game (in a converted Van Gaurd cabinet of all things).

Ring King is a 1985 Data East Game. It has 2 joysticks (new in '85). The player 1 stick is really stiff. I'm thinking it's just gummed up. Any pointers on making it work nicely again?

I'm planning on taking it out and spraying all the old grease out of hte gimbal with WD40 and then re-greasing it.

Unfortunately, all the wires in the panel are soldered to the switches, so getting it out will be a drag.

My current plan is to mame the cabinet. What do I do with the original boards? I'm sort of thinking of just leaving them there. There just doesn't seem to be too much demand for Ring King PCBs or marquees. The Ring King panel layout is sort of cool, because it will work for Defender and Robotron.

Bob
South Carolina

[jelloslug]

Unless you really like the joysticks that you got with the machine, I would just toss them at buy some new ones.  Even from Happ there only about $12 each.  If you want to keep them though, I would unsolder the connections and disassemble the stick to clean it.  Unless the cab is a jamma setup the best thing to do would be remove the existing wiring for the buttons and joysticks and start from scratch with the new wiring to your encoder.  Save the boards!  before long you will be collecting those too!  You might want to remove them ad put them in a save place though.

[neuromancer]

Unless you really like the joysticks ....

I don't know if I like them or not. I've got several Happ Supers on hand, but I thought I would clean these up and see how they are. I'm not even sure if they are 4-way or 8-way. One thing about them is they have an extremely shallow mounting depth. about 1" total, compared to like 3.5" for Supers.

Bob